Let’s face it, how long can our society live in a denial of the fact that 53% of our children are sexually abused and these are the statistics from a survey done by the Government of India. The recent case of a Mumbai where a Father was raping his two daughters for several years is not a rarest of rare case. It’s happening in our society, and most of the times it is the people close to the children who are doing it. It is not all possible that other family members do not know about it, basically it’s a conspiracy; there is a silent understanding among the family members and among the society to keep this secret inside the walls of the house. Frankly, we are all Hippocrates who just want to project an image of our happy families with high morals. We just love the respect we have in our society and to withhold that respect we are ready to sacrifice our children. We call it practical approach of living, is it not a selfish approach of living?
The children are innocent; they don’t understand the concept of sex, they crave for love, care and attention. The sexual predators master the art of manipulating the child to do sexually pervert acts under the guise of fun and play. The children indulge in the activities thinking it as a new game of playing with the body parts. By the time, children grow old enough to understand moral part, they are deep into this mess. They cannot come out even if they want to. It’s a vicious cycle,things become worse with time. The victim girl lacks self-confidence and is always under a sense of guilt and denial. It’s not about her body it’s more about her mind. Child sexual abuse is a rape of brain and thought process.
My humble question to our society. What should a Victim do when she wants to stand against her own family member(s) for sexually abusing her since childhood?
1. Going by the image of our law enforcing agencies , Police will be the last option for a Girl to confide into.
2. Suppose, Victim gathers the courage to disclose it to family members. Firstly, the whole family always knew it but they will pretend as if it’s news. This issue will be just a hush-hush. Relatives will give some condolence to the victim , blame it on destiny and de-motivate her from taking any action against the abuser.
3. Everybody has their own selfish interest. Nobody wants the world to know this ugly truth about their family.
4. Some clever relatives will advice the Girl to forgive the abusers and forget about the incident. They will manipulate some religious philosophy to advocate their point.
5. Some will show their concern for the marriage prospects of the victim as if they will spend the rest of their lives to find a groom for the victim.
6. But inspite of all this, if the victim is not ready to close the issue, Victim will be out casted by the family members.
7. Victim cannot approach the lawyers because she needs money to pay fees and family support to understand the intricacies of law and redtapism.
The crux is “Nobody stands for you because nobody else has been raped”. One needs huge courage to stand for this cause. The Victim is at the verge of losing everything. Her social rehabilitation is difficult and her marriage prospects are next to impossible.
We as a society have conspired to leave no other option to our children. Once they fall prey to a sexually pervert relative, they have to accept it and live with this reality for life. Once a Victim is married ,she becomes more vulnerable. Abusers have access to their houses, they meet them in family functions, and they are always there to ask for their share of her flesh. Now anything comes to light, it’s all about her chastity and promiscuousness.
Sadly, we have no specific laws to deal to Child Sexual Abuse and Incest in our Country. The cases are still tried under the IPC sections of rape. Conviction rate in such cases is too low due to obvious reasons. The relatives of the victim turn hostile and never turn up in the court to tell truth. Ironically, there are relatives who stand for the abusers in the Courts of Law. There is no medical evidence as it was not a case of typical rape by a stranger. The victim faces a lot of embarrassment and humiliation in the courts.
It’s my personal opinion that the society will pay a huge price for neglecting their children. As per the citation from Mahabharata
'dharma eva hato hanti dharmo raksati raksitah'"It is dharma that destroys when destroyed; it is dharma againThat protects when protected."
We as a Society have failed to protect dharma(Righteousness) and we have failed to protect our children. When 53% percent of our children are being abused, we can imagine the number of abusers roaming free in our society. There is nobody to check their moves and there is no one to stand against them.
Satyamev Jayate
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3 comments:
To begin with, Chirag, I don't think you need a pat on your back to write this meaningful blog. My complain is, why did you write so late, my friend?
Secondly, I wish I had any language to heal the wounds of the hapless; Their scars are so deep, that nothing can be done about it except making fool proof laws to avoid furthur damages to possible victims.
Let me see if I can put it in few points:
1. Counselling for both the victim as well as the paedophile by professionals and not family members.
2.Stigmatizing or ostracising, doesn't help really, if it is a one time offence. If the offender repeats, then ofcourse it has to be dealt with mercilessly. If needed, corporal.
3.To make a compulsory period in school to make the young children aware of the nature of perverts/sociopaths etc. What thehell do these schools achieve by reciting about how bravely the Quit India movement or the Champaran movement were done sixty years back during the curricular activities periods?
4.It's true, going to the police is futile. The system sucks. I would advise- CONFRONT. Don't be a VICTIM. Stand with courage and confront the Man or the Woman and ask him/her, why she did that to me.Why should we leave everything on the third party.
5.Never Condone such an act. It can be perpetrated to us as well sometime.
I'll follow up with more, eventually.
Thanks.
June
@June
Thanks for your kind words June.
1.I totally agree that Victims require counceling by Professional and peadophiles require a special therapy(I offer it free of cost from time to time).
2. I again agree and world like to add that most of the times sexual abuse continues for years. And even if its one time of ofence then its a luck of Victim.Rest assured the some other poor Gal will definately fall prey to the lust of that B######.Its the basic instinct of the paedophile,they cant change.They get caught plenty of times in their lives,sometimes beaten up,some times spared,but they carry on.The only way is to keep them out of the civilized society.Mantain the registry if sexual offenders. Buycott everybody who support such monsters.If their familt stand for them,buycott the whole family.There is no way out.
3.I agree again.
4. I agree.
5. I agree.
I understand that such helpless victims have nobody to stand for them.Even in this Mumbai case,soon Gals will be left on their own.There will be pressure from all sides to turn hostile in the courts.They have to face tremendous pressure and break up all ties from the common relative , else they will constantly try to make things calm.
Sometimes I feel it is not the Padophile who should be punished as he is anyways a pervert who needs to be isolated from society. The punishment should be awarded to those who supported his acts,those who turned blind eyes to his acts, those who tried to pressurize the victim to remain silent, those who provided comfort zone to the preperator.
Chirag
Get in touch with deepti and try to find out the current status of the Mumbai gals.Do they require any help. Legal or anything.I cant be of help as I am a male.
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